blogging

I’d like to thank Ale­sha Esco­bar, friend and fel­low indie author,for giv­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to host her here on my siteas she kicks off her end of the Addict­ed to Hero­ines Blog Tour. The tour will run from Feb­ru­ary 1–10 and will fea­ture a hand­ful of tal­ent­ed indie authors who’ve writ­ten some kick ass hero­ines. For more infor­ma­tion, click on the ban­ner and fol­low along for a chance to have fun, meets awe­some authors, and even win some prizes.

Princess in Chains: Is the Urban Fan­ta­sy Hero­ine a Vic­tim of Writ­ers’ Imag­i­na­tions?

Quick. Name one of your favorite urban fan­ta­sy hero­ines.

Now, give me one or two qual­i­ties that make her awe­some.

Was one of them the fact that she could wield mag­ic and swords like nobody’s busi­ness (Also known as being kick-ass)?

You’re not alone. Many read­ers (and writ­ers) of the genre enjoy a strong hero­ine who can defend her­self and oth­ers, if need­ed. How­ev­er an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion has emerged as to whether or not this is the only road for our hero­ine to go down and if we’re forc­ing her into a sin­gu­lar role that sends the wrong mes­sage.

Phys­i­cal strength and dom­i­na­tion have always been asso­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al male pow­er, and a woman who exerts phys­i­cal prowess must the­o­ret­i­cal­ly either tran­si­tion into the realm of mas­culin­i­ty or at least be val­i­dat­ed by it. Thus the UF hero­ine appears to dis­tance her­self from oth­er women, she must be the sole “princess” among a near­ly all-male cast, and as anoth­er writer put it, she must be “weaponized.”

The con­cept of the fan­ta­sy hero­ine jump­ing into the fray along­side the heroes isn’t some­thing new. Exam­ples range from the cross-dress­ing female knight, Brit­o­mart, of Spencer’s The Faerie Queene to the shield­maid­en Eowyn of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who described her domes­tic life as a “cage,” and sought free­dom and hon­or through tak­ing up the sword and going to war like her male coun­ter­parts.

The UF hero­ine isn’t much dif­fer­ent, except that her armor is a pair of leather pants (or ridicu­lous­ly tight jeans, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry), and her sword is a pis­tol or mag­i­cal abil­i­ty. She too, wish­es to break her chains and rat­tle her cage, and show the world what she’s made of.

Let’s be hon­est. There are those fist-pump­ing “You go, girl!” moments we love to rev­el in when we see our hero­ines karate chop an assailant, blast an evil war­lock into next week, or punch the arro­gant guy who doesn’t know how to keep his hands to him­self.

How­ev­er, if punch­ing peo­ple is all she does, and there’s lit­tle else to our hero­ine, then it can get real old real fast. So in that respect, I agree with our friends who point out that we need more dis­plays of dif­fer­ent types of strength. There’s intel­lec­tu­al strength, emo­tion­al strength, and moral strength. Just think of times you’ve had to make a dif­fi­cult deci­sion, but chose what was right over what was easy–that’s a show of strength. Or how about a day you felt like falling apart, but then you end­ed up mak­ing it through, per­haps even help­ing some­one along the way; that also, is a show of strength.

Our UF hero­ines don’t have to be princess­es in chains, they can be as com­plex and mul­ti­lay­ered as we’re will­ing to make them, and for me, that’s one of the awe­some parts about being both a writer and read­er of the genre.

Ale­sha Esco­bar writes fan­ta­sy and urban fan­ta­sy sto­ries to sup­port her choco­late habit. She earned a B.A. in Eng­lish Writ­ing and a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Edu­ca­tion, and has enjoyed both teach­ing writ­ing and being a writer. Her hob­bies include read­ing, watch­ing movies, and mak­ing crafts. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the final install­ment of The Gray Tow­er Tril­o­gy. Con­nect with her online for updates and dis­cus­sions at http://www.aleshaescobar.com

A year has passed since I’ve start­ed this web­site in the form in which it now exists. It’s been a good year. I’ve met and con­nect­ed with an awe­some com­mu­ni­ty of indie authors and I’ve man­aged to gain a lit­tle bit of expo­sure for my book and make some sales in the process. I pro­cured a few inter­views with inter­est­ing and pro­lif­ic indie authors and artists, land­ed mul­ti­ple guests post for this site, and have writ­ten a few for oth­ers as well, learned a bit about self-pro­mo­tion, and wrote mul­ti­ple book reviews. I am also active on Goodreads. Star­la Huch­ton did and incred­i­ble job redesign­ing my book cov­er, and I joined Amazon’s KDP Select pro­gram.

I joined two antholo­gies over the past year. Grim5Next Worlds Undone anthol­o­gy is a spec­tac­u­lar idea con­ceived by Lyn Mid­night where­in 36 writ­ers col­lab­o­rate to cre­ate twelves sto­ries writ­ten in three parts about the apoc­a­lypse. The col­lab­o­ra­tion even­tu­al­ly went on to include artists and musi­cians and even a children’s project. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the project became too large and unwieldy for our love­ly edi­tor and it even­tu­al­ly fiz­zled out. As of late how­ev­er, it appears that Worlds Undone may be mak­ing a come­back. I’m hop­ing it will.

The oth­er anthol­o­gy that I am involved with is more per­son­al and dear to me. It start­ed from a com­ment that I left on a fel­low indie author Matt Williams’ site. We dis­cussed the idea of going to space and that dis­cus­sion turned into an anthol­o­gy enti­tled Yuva.

Me: Four nerds verg­ing on geeks live in my house, of which I am one. One of our nerdi­est but fun con­ver­sa­tions cen­tered around the ques­tion “Would you rather go to space or the bot­tom of the ocean?” Hands down the answer was space.I once dreamed that my son, now 21, would one day go to space and walk on Mars. He is no longer a child who dreams of space, although it still intrigues, and space seems a dis­tant child­hood dream of his. But even for myself, at the ripe old age of 41, the idea of going to space is a bright hope, even though I know it is unat­tain­able and unre­al­is­tic. But, giv­en the chance, I would go. This post reminds me of the awe­some­ness of our great uni­verse, of the chaot­ic ran­dom­ness, of the beau­ty of this world and the things we have to be grate­ful for, and of how utter­ly minus­cule we peo­ple real­ly are in the grand scheme of things

Matt: Okay, you need to write this down. I fore­see you doing a sto­ry where a fam­i­ly does go into space. Ho boy, I smell anoth­er anthol­o­gy here!

Me: An anthol­o­gy about space, going to space or any­thing relat­ed sounds awe­some. I vote for you to be the edi­tor. What do we need to do to get start­ed?”

Yuva, still in the works, will con­sist of twelve sto­ries of which mine will be first. We’ve man­aged to fill about eight of the spots, so if any­one out there would like to con­tribute to a space and col­o­niza­tion anthol­o­gy, shoot me a mes­sage.

Over the course of the last few months I real­ized that I had a bit of an unin­ten­tion­al theme going, that of time man­age­ment. I wrote quite a bit about the sub­ject and sev­er­al fel­low indie authors con­tributed some real­ly amaz­ing posts about how they man­age their writ­ing time. As time is such a dif­fi­cult thing for me to wran­gle I think I was sub­con­scious­ly look­ing for a way to rec­on­cile my lack of time with my desire to be more pro­lif­ic. I’m still strug­gling with that one but one thing’s for cer­tain, if you want to pro­duce, you just have to do it.

Apart from the issue of time man­age­ment, I didn’t have much of a plan as regards what I’d talk about here, which quite frankly was very much counter to my goal.

Over the past year I’ve read many posts about cre­at­ing a unique author brand. I don’t think that I’ve done that suc­cess­ful­ly as regards this blog. I blog about the things I like, an eclec­tic mish­mosh of “stuff”, for lack of a bet­ter word. For many rea­sons I’ve pur­pose­ly stayed away from more chal­leng­ing con­tro­ver­sial top­ics. I either feel under informed, unqual­i­fied, or quite hon­est­ly afraid to engage in these chal­leng­ing dis­cus­sions out of fear of alien­at­ing read­ers but as I have so few, (haha­ha­ha) it’s pret­ty much a moot point.

Keep­ing with the idea of a theme I’ve decid­ed to choose anoth­er top­ic to give spe­cial focus this com­ing year. I’ve been giv­ing this con­sid­er­able thought this past month and have decid­ed on crit­i­cal analysis/reviews of SFF books writ­ten by women. This will cer­tain­ly not be to the exclu­sion of oth­er post ideas and I hope will be inter­est­ing for read­ers as well as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me. I nev­er feel as if I am well read enough. I plan to read and lis­ten to books. The first review will be of Bujold’s Free Falling which is already quite inter­est­ing. I plan to read more by Bujold, in addi­tion to Leguin, But­ler, Zim­mer Bradley, and McCaf­frey among oth­ers. If any­one has sug­ges­tions of authors I should check out, fire away.

Hon­or

I’d hoped to have com­plet­ed the out­line of Honor&Truth by June, but that didn’t hap­pen. Then I got caught up work­ing on my anthol­o­gy sto­ries, hit a writ­ing slump that seems to hap­pen to me every year around Sep­tem­ber, got dis­tract­ed with chil­dren, life, work (which has been a beast!), the inter­net and attempts to pro­mote An Unpro­duc­tive Woman. So, my efforts are renewed and I’m back at it.

Honor&Truth is a ser­i­al nov­el blog that I worked on for about a year and a half. I final­ly stopped more than thir­ty chap­ters in. I didn’t want to but felt com­pelled as I’d nev­er so much as out­lined a sin­gle chap­ter and my sto­ry, writ­ten by the skin of my teeth and post­ed every two weeks, had so many plot holes I couldn’t keep up with them. I stopped the blog in order to regroup, merge H&T with anoth­er sto­ry that kept spin­ning in my head, and begin a seri­ous rewrite. Months have passed and on that account, I’ve failed. For­tu­nate­ly, I love the sto­ry and the char­ac­ters enough to keep press­ing. And even bet­ter and heart­en­ing, the char­ac­ters Bilqis, Hon­or, Aram­inta (Old Moth­er), Siti and many of the oth­ers talk to me every­day. Loud­ly.

Honor&Truth has a new name. As Truth does not exist in the cur­rent out­line, it wouldn’t make much sense. As it stands the sto­ry of Hon­or exists as the sec­ond tale in the Hin­ter­land Chron­i­cles. But don’t hold me to it. As I am still in the out­lin­ing phase, this could still change.

I’ve been nom­i­nat­ed for a few blog awards, the last and most impor­tant of which is the Blog of the Year Award. This hon­or was con­veyed upon me by Matt Williams, to whom I am grate­ful. A com­plete post about is soon to come.

My great­est work for this com­ing year will be con­tin­ued sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. In oth­er words, wean­ing out the unnec­es­sary to replace with what I val­ue. I val­ue my rela­tion­ship with God, my fam­i­ly, my writ­ing, and my health. So this com­ing year will include renewed efforts to cre­ate peace and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with regard to those things I deem as most impor­tant to me. Why is life such hard work? For­get I asked that.

What have you accom­plished this past year? Toot your horn! Tell me about your suc­cess­es and fail­ures. Tell me what you have planned for 2013.

Time man­age­ment is the issue I spend the most time lament­ing. There nev­er seems to be enough of it. I work full-time as a nurse and this is a job I actu­al­ly enjoy and am grate­ful to have, but I am also a writer. If I don’t make the time to write I feel depressed, deprived, and resent­ful. If you’re ded­i­cat­ed to an avo­ca­tion that is dis­sim­i­lar to your day job, then I’m sure you know what I mean. Mak­ing time amidst the oth­er many press­ing real life respon­si­bil­i­ties can be chal­leng­ing to say the least.

I remem­ber how I’d grit my teeth dur­ing the last 15 min­utes and urge my Eng­lish stu­dents to wrap up their essay or cre­ative writ­ing assign­ment. Class would be almost over, and despite my repeat­ed warn­ings about time man­age­ment, I’d still get:

“Mrs. Esco­bar, can I take this home and bring it in tomor­row?”

“No.”

“Can I have more time?”

“No.”

“Can I go to the bath­room?”

I weigh the decision.…“Nope.”

As their writ­ing skills devel­oped, they soon learned that while jour­nal­ing and writ­ing could be relax­ing and a won­der­ful means of expres­sion, in the real world when you have to pro­duce a writ­ten piece at someone’s request (espe­cial­ly if pay­ment or grades are involved), time is a lux­u­ry that must be treat­ed as such. I have to remind myself of this, espe­cial­ly when a dead­line is loom­ing.

I’ll con­fess to you right now–I love surf­ing the net, watch­ing movies, and I am an unabashed shopa­holic. I’m also a busy mom of four, which means I have even less time to write. So how impor­tant is time man­age­ment to me? Extreme­ly. And I’m bet­ting it’s some­thing you want to con­quer and make work for you as well.

The first thing I learned about time man­age­ment for the writer, like my stu­dents did, was to remove some of the major obsta­cles that slow us down or dis­tract us. Here are four tac­tics that helped me man­age my time bet­ter:

Don’t Write Tired. You know, when your eyes are droopy, you keep sway­ing, and you start mis­spelling words and read­ing the same line five times. Not only are you work­ing slow­ly, you’re also not at your full aware­ness and cre­ative poten­tial. Some­times it’s nec­es­sary to write at night when the house is all qui­et and no one’s both­er­ing you, so if this is the case, just give your­self a 15–20 minute time lim­it for writ­ing late at night and then go to bed. Maybe you can wake up a lit­tle ear­li­er the next morn­ing to add on anoth­er quar­ter hour. This will help you pro­duce more writ­ing than try­ing to pull an “all-nighter” or a two-hour stretch at 11 p.m.

Play Pri­or­i­ties. Fill­ing out cal­en­dars isn’t much fun–but they help! Some­times I get onto my laptop’s cal­en­dar and map out a week or two ahead and then pri­or­i­tize my activ­i­ties and com­mit­ments. If you know you’re going to have a busy week, then you can deter­mine the best times when to fit in writ­ing. Also, it helps to have a writ­ten dead­line in red caps star­ing back at you, because then it impress­es on you the desire to fin­ish and meet the dead­line. When I see an activ­i­ty on my cal­en­dar that per­haps isn’t that high of a pri­or­i­ty, then that’s an extra spot where I can insert writ­ing time.

Jump Into It. Have you ever felt lazy about doing some­thing but once you jumped right into it, it was actu­al­ly eas­i­er than you thought? I once read that as human beings, we tend to take the least amount of action nec­es­sary. So, if some­thing seems like it’s going to be dif­fi­cult or bur­den­some, we tend to shy away from it (this is how I feel about that pile of dish­es in my kitchen). If I feel like I have to “do all that writ­ing,” I may be less inclined to actu­al­ly do it, and will waste time doing #4 on the list.

Dis­trac­tions, Dis­trac­tions. They’re all around us, espe­cial­ly since with a sim­ple click of our mouse we can escape our work in progress (WIP) and go vis­it social media land or watch a movie. Beware of dis­trac­tions. That “ten minute break” watch­ing fun­ny YouTube videos will turn into an hour. I promise you. When I taught writ­ing, this was the major down­fall of most stu­dents who hadn’t com­plet­ed their assign­ments and met the dead­line. They were dis­tract­ed by friends, or the cute guy/girl, or that kid that want­ed to go to the bath­room. Some­times dis­trac­tions are thrown at us, some­times we wan­der into them like a day­dream. How do you remove this obsta­cle? Sep­a­rate your writ­ing activ­i­ty from oth­er activ­i­ties. If you’re typ­ing away on your WIP, resist the urge to check your Ama­zon rank­ing or if some­one retweet­ed you. Treat your WIP like a friend that needs your atten­tion, and by giv­ing your writ­ing the com­mit­ment and time it needs, you’ll be reward­ed with a more sat­is­fy­ing ses­sion that didn’t drag on because you were dis­tract­ed.

I’m a big believ­er in the idea that time man­age­ment is more work­able when we remove obsta­cles that slow us down or turn us from our path. Some­times life gets in the way, or we’re tired, or busy, but just remem­ber a small com­mit­ment to your task can go a long way. Don’t pres­sure your­self if you’ve only got­ten in 15 min­utes, or maybe even missed a day. Just start again the next day, and be con­sis­tent with get­ting in some writ­ing at least a few times a week. As you keep writ­ing and keep prac­tic­ing, you’ll find that the process will become eas­i­er and more man­age­able.

*****

Ale­sha Esco­bar writes fan­ta­sy and urban fan­ta­sy sto­ries to sup­port her choco­late habit. She earned a B.A. in Eng­lish Writ­ing and a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Edu­ca­tion, and has enjoyed both teach­ing writ­ing and being a writer. Her hob­bies include read­ing, watch­ing movies, and mak­ing crafts. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the final install­ment of The Gray Tow­er Tril­o­gy.